[gpsd-dev] Minimum Python Version

[Fred Wright]

One of the issues I ran across in getting 3.16 to work on the Mac is that
several Python programs changed the shebang lines to specify "python2", in
order to defend against Python3 as a default.  But OSX has no "python2" by
default; it can be set up manually or via the MacPorts python2_select
port, but without that all programs specifying "python2" fail.

The best fix for this (where practical) is to make the code
Python3-compatible and go back to the generic "python" in the shebang
lines.  Since many Python3 features have been backported to 2.6, it's a
lot easier to write "Python2/3" code if one can assume that Python2 is at
least Python2.6.

The Python version specification in build.txt is "Python 2.x, x >= 6", but
strictly speaking, that's a *build* requirement, not a *run* requirement.
I wasn't able to find any user-level "system requirements" documentation
giving a minimum Python version for end users to run the Python programs.

It wouldn't necessarily be unreasonable to have a stricter version
requirement for regression tests than for normal end-user programns.

Fred Wright